When a slogan equals terrorism

Legally speaking, Walter Wolfgang's experience at the Labour party conference was even more bizarre than it first seemed. After being forcibly ejected he wanted to get back in but was stopped from doing so by the police, under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

I don't believe the police had any legal right to do what they did. I've been reading section 44 and it's absolutely clear that its purpose is to give the police the power to stop and search. Not just to stop someone, full stop. The stopping is only there to lead to the searching.

But there is nothing I've seen in any of the reports to suggest that Mr Wolfgang was searched. If that's right, then the police were not entitled to use section 44. The whole act, as its title suggests, is specifically aimed at terrorism. Section 45 says that authorisation to carry out a section 44 stop and search "may be exercised only for the purpose of searching for articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism".

So even had a search been authorised and carried out, it would probably have been illegal. Whoever decided to use the Terrorism Act to stop Mr Wolfgang from returning to the hall didn't know what he was doing - but achieved the objective.

Another protesting octogenarian felt the brush of section 44 last week, though he was searched. John Catt was wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Bush Blair Sharon to be tried for war crimes torture human rights abuse" and, lower down, "the leaders of rogue states".

The stop-and-search form filled out by the police officer stated, under grounds for intervention, "carrying plackard [sic] and T-shirt with anti-Blair info". The purpose of the stop and search was stated as "terrorism". So now we know. For the Sussex police, at any rate, an anti-Blair slogan is a ground for suspecting terrorism.

There is obviously a problem in the use of section 44. It was used prolifically against protesters around the Brighton conference centre. I am sure Sussex are not the only force using section 44 essentially as a tool of control. The police know very well that the vast majority of the people they're stopping have absolutely no hint of a suspicion of any link with terrorism. But the Terrorism Act is all they've got, they argue, to ensure that gatherings like party conferences and G8 meetings go off smoothly.

When Tony Blair and Charles Clarke tell the chief constable of Sussex that they want no trouble at their conference, and if that can only be achieved by wrongly using the anti-terrorism laws to stifle freedom of expression, freedom of movement and the right to protest - tough. That is not the way a democratic state should behave. But don't just blame the police for exceeding their powers. The government is conniving at every stage.

· This is an amazing legal coincidence. After many years - no, make that centuries - in which we have had none at all, we've now got, within a few days of each, two masturbating judges facing justice. One I've mentioned in the past, the Oklahoma judge using a penis pump in court - the giveaway was the loud whooshing sound it made. This week he's on trial for indecent exposure. But now he's got a judicial masturbatory rival, a French judge from Angoulême, Philippe Z, who also performed his solo during a court hearing. He has been suspended from duty and psychiatrists have agreed that he was not responsible for his actions. He has just appeared before the judges' disciplinary body claiming that his suspension was unfair. "I am curable and readaptable," he insisted. "But," he went on in an outburst of honesty, "as what, I don't know."

· In the US, calling someone scuzzy or a scuzzball is pejorative, offensive and denotes an unpleasant low-life kind of person, somewhat akin to an English scumbag. For Demetrius Fiorentino, on trial for murder in West Chester, Pennsylvania, this creates a problem. He's generally known as Scuz, and last week his lawyer tried to persuade the judge to ban the use of that nickname during the trial. He argued that if witnesses kept referring to the defendant as Scuz, it would suggest to the jury that Fiorentino had acquired that name for a reason, and it would prejudice jurors against him. Impossible, riposted the prosecution. The witnesses didn't know him by any other name. They would be unable to give evidence about him unless they could call him Scuz. The judge is thinking about it.